Little Death by the Sea (30 page)

Maggie gaped at her mother and then her
father and then at the little puddle of urine on the imported
Moroccan tile beneath the child’s chair.

She looked up in time to see Laurent walk
through the doorway, the squirming little terrier puppy in his
arms—its front paws bandaged and a worried glint still in its large
dark eyes.

“
Qu’est-ce qui se passe
?” His brow
puckered in confusion. What’s happening?

“Well,” John Newberry said, picking up the
other drink from the table and bringing it to his lips. “I believe
we just had a breakthrough.”

Maggie turned to face Laurent in the car as
it sped through Buckhead.

“Peeing on the floor and running away
screaming ‘leave me alone!’ during your own birthday party? That’s
progress?” she asked.

Her mother had been joyous after the initial
shock of Nicole’s behavior. So much so, in fact, that the arrival
of Laurent with the scruffy little dog seemed to have gotten lost
on her usual list of things-to-obsess-and-be-unhappy-about. She had
sliced off a large piece of birthday cake, tucked a gaily packaged
gift under her arm, and had disappeared upstairs to spend the rest
of the evening with Nicole. And although she later admitted that
Nicole hadn’t uttered another word, it was clear that Elspeth felt
encouraged by the incident. She even instructed that the puppy be
put in a box with a warm blanket and a bowl of food in the kitchen
until Nicole was ready to receive him. Maggie was
thunderstruck.

She, Laurent and her father had retired to
the library to eat cake and drink Wild Turkey for the rest of the
evening.

Hey!” She said suddenly, giving his shoulder
a shake. “Pull into Selby’s for a sec, would you?”

“Eh?” Laurent began to turn down the street
where the advertising agency was located.

“I forgot, I need that little portable tape
recorder Gerry said I could borrow for the trip. It’ll just take a
second, okay?”

“Of course.” Laurent sighed and rubbed his
eyes. After this was all over, she’d make it up to him, she
promised herself. She’d swamp him with attention the way she was
sure most real French girlfriends do.

Laurent pulled the Mitsubishi into the office
building parking lot and stopped in front of the large double
doors. He unbuckled his seatbelt. But she was already out of the
car door. “No, darling, pas de necessaire. Don’t even turn off the
engine. I won’t be a minute.”

Maggie dashed for the heavy outside door and
used her key to get inside. She stood in front of the lobby
elevators, now looming like wicked maws in the vacant lobby and
glanced through the side panels of the building’s entrance to see
Laurent waiting patiently in the car. She punched the Up button and
the lift came almost immediately. Holding her keys in a manner
that, according to an article she’d read in the newspaper’s Sunday
Supplement, would enable her to seriously wound or disable any
would-be attackers, Maggie stepped off the elevator and onto her
office floor. She looked behind her and to the sides, then slid the
key into the lock of the agency’s front door. She was surprised
when it opened easily. It hadn’t been locked. She slipped inside,
closing the door behind her. Had Jenny forgotten to lock up
tonight? Who’d been the last one out?

The darkened receptionist counter looked
sinister to her with its disorderly assortment of telephones,
snaking wires, and magazines. Maggie scurried by, cursing herself
for the forgetfulness that had prompted this mission in the first
place. She ran past the art director’s cubicles and down the hall
to her own office. Couldn’t this have waited until morning? she
wondered, her irritation with herself competing with her
edginess.

She found the light switch and was
immediately assaulted with a bedlam of sensations, as if there were
a terrible odor in the room that was released with the flick of the
switch. She stared into the office, her hand still wavering near
the wall. Her desk, quite messy at the best of times, was on its
side, its drawers hanging open, reams of paper and open file
folders erupting from them like great winged birds frozen in
flight. Her desk chair was across the room, upside down. The filing
cabinet, although right side up, had its contents scattered
everywhere in a white, snowstorm of paper and manila envelopes.

Maggie felt her stomach lurch violently and
she thought for a minute that she might be sick on top of the paper
mess. She felt a strange creeping sensation on the back of her
neck. One part of her thought she should look for the recorder
while another, more controlling, part of her wanted to flee—by the
window, if necessary. She thought about calling Gerry. Then, more
sensibly, thought about calling the police.

Instead, she turned and ran.

Sprinting down the darkened hall, clutching
the office key in front of her like a protective talisman, Maggie
cut through the conference room to the receptionist’s alcove that
led to the outside foyer and stumbled over what felt like an
oversized bag of laundry. She fell, tumbling face-first into the
receptionist’s desk, flinging her arms out in an attempt to catch
her fall.

As she scrambled to her feet, cursing Jenny
for leaving her gym bag in the middle of the hall, she felt the
hard resistance of the “bag.” And then its warmth. Not wanting to
know, she turned to look at it.

It was Dierdre. She lay, staring blankly at
Maggie, like an overly-large Madame Alexander doll, her brown curls
framing her calm face, her limbs poking senselessly from her torso,
which was propped woodenly up against the desk in an affected
pose.

Maggie began to scream.

Chapter 17

1

Maggie got up from the bed, leaving Laurent
sleeping peacefully, and padded into the kitchen. As she pulled the
refrigerator door open and peered inside, the interior light sliced
a wedge out of the darkness.

It was three o’clock in the morning. The
police had allowed them to leave the office building at just before
one a.m.

She pulled out a carton of two-percent milk,
grateful she’d been able to convince Laurent to stop buying whole
milk. She poured a stream of Hershey’s chocolate syrup into a
glass, added the milk, stirred vigorously, and took her drink into
the living room.

Punching the buttons on the television remote
control, she ran through her viewing choices: a sixties movie about
a bunch of hippies intent on overthrowing the United States
government, a cooking show with the Galloping Gourmet, a Spanish
vocabulary lesson presented by a woman with a very strong Southern
accent, and an old Bonanza episode she’d seen at least half a dozen
times. Muting the volume for Laurent’s sake, she settled on Bonanza
and sank back into the couch with her chocolate milk.

Gerry had come in to the office for
questioning just before midnight. Maggie could still see his face,
serious and nodding, shocked but not surprised. She thought he
looked like one of those converts from some fanatical religious
sect who is unable to conceal his pleasure when evidence of man’s
sins is displayed so prominently. He feels vindicated now, Maggie
thought, as she raised the volume on Little Joe just a tad.

Poor Dierdre. Poor little girl. So happy to
be a part of the advertising world, to be a part of its wit and
glitter and hard work and excesses. She had obviously surprised the
vandal when she stopped by the office to do something. Maggie
closed her eyes to blot out the sight of the perky traffic manager
propped up against the back of the receptionist’s desk like some
large, broken mannequin.

Kazmaroff and Burton had not been able to
disguise their surprise at finding Maggie connected to yet another
violent death. They probably think it’s a simple burglary gone
awry, she thought, flipping off the television set. She could still
hear Detective Burton’ niggling question: “What do you suppose he
was looking for, Miss Newberry? In your office, Miss Newberry?”
Jesus! Did he think she was withholding clues or evidence or
something? How was she supposed to know why her office was trashed?
One thing seemed sure, anyway, Maggie reasoned miserably, it
couldn’t be Gerard this time. The man’s been in France for nearly
five months. She thought of Gerry’s strained, unhappy face. He
looked old, she thought. When did that happen?

She gazed at the television set and then away
from it at the front door, which faced the couch.

This is where Elise sat, Maggie thought. And
where, she wondered, had the killer been? Burton and Kazmaroff had
said the front door showed no signs of a forced entry. So, the
killer had a key? Had he come in while Elise was sleeping? Had he
been hiding inside the apartment somewhere? Maggie’s eyes lingered
on the door to the front hall closet.

Maggie closed her eyes tightly and imagined
Elise, strung out and needy. She’d come home. She’d screwed her
life up and everyone knew it. Her parents knew it, her once adoring
big sister knew it. Maybe even her little daughter knew it. And so
she was sitting here wanting a fix so bad that nothing else
mattered. Not her family, not Nicole, not tomorrow.

And then the closet door had creaked softly
and swung open.

Maggie’s eyes flew open and she stared at the
closed door of the closet. She felt suddenly cold. Reminding
herself that she needed to try to get a few hours sleep before her
trip tomorrow morning, she stood up slowly and stretched, hoping
the action would incline her toward drowsiness.

Whatever Elise was feeling or thinking that
afternoon, now three months ago, Maggie sensed it wasn’t going to
help her now in trying to find her killer. Instead, thoughts of it
only tended to fill her with an immobilizing sadness and futility.
She picked up her empty milk glass, deposited it in the sink and
returned to bed.

In a few hours, she told herself, the real
heart of her quest would begin. Tomorrow would be the start of the
revelations. If she found out nothing in Paris as to who killed her
sister, she would at least find out more about the kind of person
her sister had become. She would at least discover who it was who
had died in her Buckhead living room six months ago and left so
many people so injured.

2

The stand-up café counter at the Charles
DeGaulle Airport held a dazzling array of pastries and breads. The
confections were displayed in staggered tiers to tempt weary
travelers as they trudged to and from their international
connections. Maggie leaned against a stone pillar, munching a
croissant and drinking strong coffee. Noticing that every other
person she saw seemed to be puffing away on cigarettes as they
moved about their business made her think that perhaps Paris truly
was a place out of pace with the rest of the world. Untidy things
like emphysema and clogged arteries and destroyed ozone layers must
not exist over here, she mused, taking another bite of her flaky,
rich roll. And she was glad. A Paris that shrugged indifferently to
a concerned, fastidious other-world was the sophisticated Paris
every romantic traveler expected to see.

This was only Maggie’s second visit to Paris.
The first, when she was thirteen years old, had been on a shopping
trip with her mother and sister. Paris had enchanted her then and,
even now she was expectant about her return to the City of
Light.

Dumping the remnants of her breakfast in a
rubbish bin, Maggie hoisted the strap of her carry-on bag to her
shoulder and dove into the bustle of pedestrians moving
frenetically within the large airport. She planned to change her
currency first, then buy a metro ticket to
La gare du Nord
.
Although she was tempted to take a taxi to her hotel, Maggie
reminded herself that she was on a budget.

Dierdre’s death seemed to have caused a
bigger stir among Fulton County’s finest than Elise’s, and why this
should be, Maggie wasn’t sure. She didn’t know much about Dierdre.
She knew she’d graduated two years ago from the University of
Georgia with a major in advertising. She knew that Dierdre had
loved her job at Selby & Parker. What she didn’t know was why
she was dead.

The events of the last twenty-four hours and
the burgeoning symptoms of jet lag combined to give Maggie a
glassy-eyed look and a slightly hysterical feeling. Although she
had bought an open-ended ticket to Paris and could leave whenever
her business was completed, she knew she couldn’t stay long. And
now she wished very much that Laurent had come with her after all.
As she went through the motions of buying her metro ticket and then
boarding the train, she was overwhelmed by how much everything
reminded her of him. Together with her thrill of being in Paris
again, she felt a wistful longing for him.

The train ride to
La gare du Nord
took
her past forty minutes of seedy Paris suburbs and nondescript
office parks. She stared out the train window and wondered if Elise
had known anyone in these dirty tenements, these bland and
impoverished apartments of concrete. It was amazing to her that
such ugliness could ring what some would say is the most
architecturally blessed city in the world.

Once at the train station, tired and
unwilling to decipher the bus schedule that would take her the rest
of the way to her hotel, Maggie found a taxi and handed the driver
the address of her hotel on the Left Bank. The driver, a large,
malodorous woman lolling on a seat cover made of rolling wooden
beads, seemed irritated either with Maggie’s lack of bags or,
perhaps, her destination. At any rate, she snorted continually
throughout the long drive to the
Hotel d’Etoile Verte
on Rue
Tournon and refused to look at Maggie when they arrived. Maggie
tipped generously and left the taxi with relief.

It’s just the long trip, she told herself as
she trudged up the few short steps to the concierge’s desk in the
hotel. She checked in and took the single, rattling elevator to the
third floor.